


I am done with my graceless heart (so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart)

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [97]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Flashbacks, Gen, Grief, Mithrim, Title from a Florence + the Machine Song, happier moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 00:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19414990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Mithrim’s men smoke pipes, even in the heat of summer. You follow the eye-glow of embers, and think of creatures moving in the dark.





	I am done with my graceless heart (so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart)

_Mithrim’s men smoke pipes, even in the heat of summer. You follow the eye-glow of embers, and think of creatures moving in the dark._

“We riding out tonight?”

“Maybe not.” Maedhros glances swiftly over his shoulder before stripping off his shirt. It’s a tiny motion, casual, but Celegorm narrows his eyes anyway. “Athair’s in the forge.”

Celegorm grunts his agreement. Athair and lost, dreamlike hours in his forge: one of the few things unchanged. Of course, in the east, Athair had other things to love.

Celegorm frowns at the silver water.

“That lake is going to be fucking freezing,” he warns Maedhros, who has taken off his boots.

Maedhros lifts an eyebrow at Huan, currently thumping his wet tail against the dry grass. “Good enough for your hound, little brother.”

“Suit yourself,” Celegorm says. Maedhros shot a man last night, right between the eyes. Celegorm isn’t going to heckle him. He stretches out on his back instead, and wonders if he can get a sunburn in February. It’s almost as warm as June was. Winter has felt useless, here.

Maedhros swims out and disappears underwater. Celegorm would join if him, if he was fool enough to enjoy freezing.

The day melts over Celegorm’s closed eyelids.

“Bloody hell,” Maedhros says, emerging. He’s got a skein of pondweed hanging from one shoulder, and he flicks it off. “You were right.”

“Fresh as a daisy?” Celegorm mocks. “Or did a piranha gnaw on your leg?”

Maedhros tugs his shirt on, shivers once, and tucks his hair behind his ears. “Nothing like the feeling of drowning, every now and then.” His tone is light.

Celegorm rolls over. “You sorted with Maglor?”

A pause. “Mm.”

That probably means yes. Celegorm doesn’t need to ask further.

“If we’re not riding out,” he says, “Good a time as any to bring the twins up to snuff on hand-to-hand. Curufin almost broke Amrod’s nose the other day.”

Maedhros sits beside him, nimble even when he looks cast-down. “How sure are you that Curufin wasn’t trying?”

Celegorm smirks with half his mouth. Huan gazes at him with gentle golden eyes. “You’re so hard on him.”

Maedhros swipes the back of his hand over his lips. “Really? I—”

“I’m funning you. He’s a little weasel.”

“You’re likely right, though.”

“You? Hard on anyone?”

“He’s very fond of _you_ , and I’m glad for it,” Maedhros says, in one of his flashes of beautiful attention. Evading the question; blaming himself, it doesn’t matter. Maedhros has a mile’s breadth of charm in his eyes.

That is the only thing that the west has left unchanged about him. 

_Everyone’s a traitor, after enough of you are dead. You. Family? The word doesn’t fit anymore. Like hell, that word suits you and them and a heap of bones._

“I don’t like sparring,” Amrod whines.

“Get used to it,” Celegorm says. Really, what is wrong with the twins? After months of hardship—he shakes his head and stalks off to the edge of the outer field, longbow in hand.

What he’d give for the yellow-eyed hunter to poke his head out of the distant thickets. What he’d give for a thing to kill simply.

“Every deer in a mile radius just quavered in fear before Fionn mac Cumhaill,” Maedhros calls. He’s walking with—Jem, that’s her name, and Celegorm dislikes remembering it. He’d rather not give a flying fig for any of Mithrim’s men, other than their own. And even then…

“Not with you scaring them away, you rat bastard.”

Jem snorts. It might be laughter; it might not.

Celegorm supposes he can respect that.

“You’ve missed the action. Amras swept Caranthir off his feet,” Maedhros says, grinning. “They’re learning.”

Celegorm scowls over the rolling turf. He’s still irritable. “Wonderful. I’m done teaching them.”

“I told you he’s a handful,” Maedhros says, confidentially, to Jem.

Celegorm wheels, ready to loose an arrow if Jem so much as smiles, but Maedhros raises his hands quite innocently.

“Your _dog_ , goddamn. Look at him, why don’t you? Digging like a terrier.”

“Huan,” Celegorm snaps, and Huan subsides.

“Gopher for dinner,” Maedhros says, wrinkling his nose, like they didn’t try that in Kansas. Celegorm won’t think of Kansas if he can help it. No point. The hunt abandoned, he falls into step beside Maedhros, wishing Jem would take the hint and scram.

She doesn’t, but she doesn’t prattle on, either, just tucks her hands in her pockets like a man and squints towards the mountains beyond the fort.

“No more smoke,” Maedhros says. “Not from here. Tell me if you’re going out again.”

“Begging for trouble?” Jem asks grimly. 

“So they tell me.” Maedhros shrugs. To Celegorm, he looks a bit tired.

_You weren’t lying to Maglor. You’re not a liar, and you know what they did to him. You know how men like—_ that— _kill their prey. You saw the body that used to be Jem. The body that used to be Galway._

_Your hope—if it is one—is that he got his hands on a knife, too._

_You hope he had a moment to make himself free._

**Author's Note:**

> Fionn is an Irish hunter-warrior figure.


End file.
